


Tomorrowland

by YellowDistress



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Has A Heart, tony is grumpy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-27 03:21:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19782199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YellowDistress/pseuds/YellowDistress
Summary: Peter shows up in the Siberian bunker.Tony decides this kid is his shot at a legacy.





	Tomorrowland

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! Just a quite oneshot idea I had and I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
> 
> Also, this isn't really anti-cap...It's from Tony's POV so there are gonna be some negative thoughts on Steve and Bucky. Just a warning, I know some people don't wanna read such as that.
> 
> NOTE: I think it is up for debate whether Tony is emotionally sound in this oneshot. He has just been through something traumatic so I think the reader can interpret his idea as either something good or something bad. That's a theme I was trying to get across, of whether Tony is really separating himself from Howard, or trying to one-up him? It felt kinda like a character study, so it was a lot of fun to write!

How they had ended up there:

Peter, the kid, the kid from Queens that Tony had so stupidly recruited to bring to Germany. The fourteen-year-old _child_ had somehow stowed away…To Siberia…

Tony was never one to approach kids. Part of him always felt a sort of disconnect in a way, because looking into the eyes of children reminded him of being looked at by his father and that urge to not become Howard was so great that the idea of avoiding small humans became something reasonable. Peter’s eyes were always wide when he looked at Tony, and though Tony had only known him for a few days now personally, he had to avoid it. Because listening to the kid ramble, his readiness to fight, to be a part of something bigger – his self-sacrificial attitude at only fourteen-years-old…Tony almost told May Parker. Because he regretted getting the kid involved.

Tony did not want Peter in a suit.

Tony did not want Peter to be Spider-Man anymore.

It had nothing to do with capabilities, it had to do with childhood and the life Tony knew was on the horizon. The threat of Ross and SHIELD and everyone who would be watching someone so young with the hopes of molding a perfect little soldier, and Tony feared maybe he too had taken advantage of that innocence and preyed on the naivety to get Peter to Germany in the first place. It caused self-reflection, as well as downing a few drinks to stop the self-reflection, because such things were reserved for the shop when he could slam bleeding knuckles into things and then patch himself up with all the anger and lick his wounds privately.

Peter had looked so small, speaking to him:

_“When you can do the things that I can…and you don’t…then the bad things happen…they happen because of you.”_

Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit. Tony wanted to ask the kid – who had said that to him? Who had tried to instill such high standards in someone so young? It wasn’t fair. Tony did not know him well enough and the desperation born from the Germany fight had led him to ignore that screaming part of himself that was wired to go off. Instead he brought the kid with him, against better judgement, even when Peter had seemed apprehensive about going. It was just another one of those things he would think about years down the line and wonder how he had let it get that far. How he had basically abducted a teenager from Queens.

Then they had ended up there.

In Siberia.

Cold. Concrete. Tony didn’t even know how the boy had gotten there, where he had come from, where he had hidden, but somewhere deep in the fight of having his body crushed, of ripping the Winter Soldier’s arm – _Bucky Barnes, James Buchanan Barnes, Murderer_ – off, the kid had swung in, Tony had be lying there, staring at the ceiling, as the kid took a sharp blow to the side of the face from Steve, trying to escape with Barnes and things kind of got blurry after that. He could hear the tussling, but Tony struggled to breathe in his limp suit. It was heavy, broken, shut down and he wiggled in the slightest, but it felt better to sleep, even if it was practically freezing.

Then he saw the mask of the suit he had built.

It was torn off, to reveal the fourteen-year-old baby face of a child with a bloodied nose and Tony supposed that was from Steve’s strike against him…As well as a lightly blackened eye, but that seemed older – maybe from Germany, Tony wasn’t sure.

_Tony’s mother’s brows furrowed, she took his face in her hand._

_“What happened to your eye?”_

_“Some kids at school.”_

_Tony didn’t have the heart to tell her Howard had backhanded him for mouthing off the day before._

“Mister Stark? Mister Stark – Holy shit, dude, that was…that was insane, I’m sorry, they got away – I couldn’t…You know I couldn’t chase them, I was worried about…Anyway, are you okay?”

The words were flying, million miles per hour. Driving force, sit up, Tony pushed and Peter’s hands were on the suit, trying to help him to get into a sitting position against the concrete pillar. Peter’s eyes were round and worried – Tony felt sick. It was so cold, and he stared at Peter a long time, blood running from his own face and he knew he must have had a look of pure horror, because Peter was mimicking him. Then he understood: When children fall, don’t say anything. Don’t make a big deal.

Tony straightened his shoulders as best as he could, and he ordered, beginning to wiggle as he watched Peter’s face contort into further concern, “Get this off me. Help me get it off.”

Maybe his voice was shaking, but nonetheless, Peter’s hands started to tear at the suit, breaking it like it was paper under his fingers that didn’t look like they contained super strength and yet somehow, they did. Tearing, and the metal creaked and groaned and eventually Tony was exposed to just how cold the bunker was. His shoulder still ached, he wished he had brought the sling but he hadn’t. Tony breathed into his hands and tried not to think about the time he woke in the Tennessee forest, ice surrounding him and Jarvis leaving him alone…A lot like Friday had been forced to do when a Shield had torn through.

Tony looked.

There it was on the ground a few feet away and Tony could have spat on it, he was so angry.

But Peter’s eyes were watching him. Watching him flex his fingers, watching him and staring. Tony felt that anger redirect, the he asked, maybe too harshly, because Peter flinched just in the slightest, “How did you get here?”

Peter looked down. He inhaled and answered, “Colonel Rhodes…Well, Colonel Rhodes called Happy, and he was – he was worried about you, you know? And Colonel Rhodes is stuck at the hospital, so he couldn’t come check on you…And – And Happy was really worried, and so Happy…Put me in one of War Machine’s suits and the coordinates flew me here and…And here I am.”

Tony’s eyes narrowed.

“He put you in a suit…And you found my coordinates. Where you could have been killed.”

Peter looked taken aback by the venom in Tony’s tone, and maybe it was the anger. The pure frustration boiling because he hadn’t wanted anyone else involved. The fact that he had just gotten his ass handed to him – Bucky Barnes had murdered his mother and father and now he and a fourteen-year-old were in the Siberian-ass-cold snow. His body felt like it had just been thrown through a washing machine. Tony ground his teeth together and shook his head, flexing his fingers and –

“Don’t be mad at Happy. Or Colonel Rhodes…They were just worried about you.”

Tony scoffed. He looked at Peter and ground out, “So they sent a child.”

The kid flinched, and Tony flinched back from himself even. That had been too hard, had bitten too forcefully. Redirection. Tony couldn’t find it. He evaluated, tried, Pepper had taught him that before she had left. Revaluate why it feels like the world is imploding, why he is so angry, and he fucking knew why – there was no secret to it. He was drowning in an abyss of wondering why he was suffocating. He was suffocating because Steve Rogers had known – had known – Goddammit he had known.

Peter looked awkward, his face deepening in sadness.

Tony shook his head and squeezed his left arm tighter.

“Get the suit in here,” Tony said, “We can use it to call home.”

Peter paused and looked at him. There was something like guilt behind his eyes. Tony paused, heavily, and he didn’t want to know – nothing else could go wrong that day and yet Peter’s eyes looked troubled. Tony questioned sharply, “What?”

“The suit kinda,” Peter bit his lip, “When I got out…It flew away.”

Tony felt it. Those remnants from years ago, Killian, the snow, the memories of his chest feeling like it was going to close, like he couldn’t breathe, and falling from a wormhole. So many worse things had happened since then, he had lost his mind and he leaned forward, running his hands through his hair as he sucked in a deep breath. Peter’s face blurred briefly and the sound of ringing, tinnitus almost, filtered in but Tony was alone inside of himself and inside of that terror and not knowing how to escape was eating him alive. He inhaled deeply, sucking the air in sharp, sharp, sharp and he wanted to stop smothering.

Peter’s face was bruised.

_“What happened to your eye?”_

_“What happened to your eye?”_

“Mister Stark?”

Peter’s voice was small, worried, and a hand touched his arm gently. Tony could hardly feel it, enough that it didn’t make his head want to explode off his shoulders. Tony looked at Peter, finally seeing him, the blur disappearing and Peter was blinking like a wide-eyed child, scared of where they were and Tony realized…Peter might have fallen and Tony had made a big deal because now the kid looked scared too and he was feeding off of him. Tony swallowed that panic, took it down, and he cleared his throat and nodded his head.

“Alright…alright, let’s…Let’s go outside. Help me up.”

That was an ordeal, getting him to his feet, slinging his arm over the kid’s shoulder. Luckily, for someone so scrawny, he was strong. Strong enough to hold Tony’s weight until he could find his footing. They moved towards the stairs, and Tony paused in his steps to look down at the shield. Peter bit his lower lip and he asked, “Should I –“

“Leave it. We’ll get it once we’ve got a way outta this hell-hole.”

So Peter did as he was told, and they moved. The stairs, the main floor, out the front doors into the snow. It wasn’t raining down thickly, enough for them to still be able to see and Tony felt it crunch under his feet. His mind wandered between wakefulness and sleep, and Peter was shivering. Once outside, Tony glanced around and Peter wouldn’t let go until Tony finally pulled away, forcing himself to stand on his own two feet. Peter looked worried, again and again and he couldn’t take solace in the child’s fear. Why had Happy sent him? Why had Happy done this to someone so young?  


Tony had done this. He realized it and it felt as if someone had driven a letter opener under his ribs. His mind transferred to survival, and he held out a hand, ordering, “Mask.”

Peter took a few moments to respond accordingly, but quickly he handed it over. Tony turned it inside-out, and tugged several wires. Peter watched on curiously, a bit of the fear melting from his face, and Tony noticed the blood drying on his nose as he leaned forward, too close, to see what Tony was doing. Tony almost rolled his eyes, lack of personal space, boundaries, he had noticed kids did that a lot, but Peter was fourteen, Tony didn’t know what he expected out of him. Sometimes he felt like Howard’s temper was blooming and Tony shoved it down harshly.

Tony finished, and handed the mask back over.

“What’d you do?”

“Sent a distress signal,” Tony answered, sighing, “Happy should get it and send someone or something to pick us up. Then we can get out of this place and I can have a much-needed drink and reevaluate my life choices.”

Tony noticed the way Peter’s expression changed. Like the words had said something to him, in their cold wasteland. Whispered across the rocks and the snow and Peter didn’t move when Tony went to take a seat on a nearby rock. He didn’t care how cold it was – he did not want to go back inside. Peter was grimacing, his covered toes kicking a small pebble and causing it to click across the ground until it landed hollowly in the snow and Tony…Didn’t know he could relate to something so mundane.

“They were hurting you.”

Peter whispered it. Tony wanted to roll his eyes, to wave him off, but instead more harshness left his mouth and he had to stop using the kid as a personal punching bag because he was really starting to hate himself, “What gave it away? The shield being shoved into my chest? Listen…I don’t really want to have this conversation right now, especially not with a kid, so please…Quiet.”

He expected more harm, like Peter would silence, would look injured, or sad, or something of the sort. But instead he just rubbed his arm and murmured, “I’m sorry I – I just don’t understand. I don’t understand.”

“There’s a lot you’re not gonna understand.”

Then the words came.

“He hurt your mom and dad.”

Tony felt startled. He sat a little straighter on the rock, putting a hand on his knee as he looked at Peter as if he had just said something in a nonexistent language. Tony gulped down, past this lump of agony that had been following him, like he had to push down the frustrations because he couldn’t just be left alone in his suffering and – _don’t look hurt, don’t look hurt, don’t make it a big deal, kids make big deals when adults do, don’t make it big –_

_“What happened to your eye?”_

“Excuse me?” Tony questioned. Not in a way that said ‘I didn’t hear you, repeat’ but in a way that dared for a repetition. Peter looked weird, odd, in a way Tony had never seen him, but of course he had only just met him. Like the kid was close to crying, and Tony felt sort of jealous because he wasn’t allowed to cry, not in front of the child. Tony looked away and he said, “Don’t do that.”

“I’m sorry, it’s just…You know, I’m really sorry.”

“Stop,” Tony ordered, and he looked at Peter, not with anger but with a sort of pleading he couldn’t place. He needed Peter to stop. To stop being sorry, because really, this had nothing to do with him. Peter’s eyes were pink around the edges, no tears were falling but they were glassy and Peter was breathing from his mouth, maybe his nose was clogging with emotion and grief that wasn’t his, “Stop – why the – why the hell are you sorry for, huh? This has nothing to do with you.”

Peter grabbed his right wrist, and stepped to the side. He squeezed the way Tony sometimes squeezed his left arm. A gesture that showed stress. Tony wondered if he had pain there, maybe he should ask, get the kid some kind of treatment, a brace, there were bound to be injuries even if Peter was fourteen, strong, he had to have been hurt sometimes. Joints didn’t always heal, and Tony found concern under his chest. God, Peter was so young to be doing this shit. Tony had been in late thirties, Peter was only fourteen…

“I’m just sorry,” Peter said, weakly, “You know…I just…you got left all alone. And I know I’m not much. I’m not who you want here, and I’m sorry for that too. And I…I wasn’t really honest with you earlier.”

Tony’s brows furrowed, “What?”

“I wasn’t honest,” Peter said, “Happy didn’t send me, or Colonel Rhodes…I stole the suit and I flew it here…I had no idea what I was doing and we kinda crashed and I fell out and – well it flew away from me. Guess I scared it off.”

The man breathed out slowly. Calming. Something he was proud of because he didn’t think Howard would ever take the time to try to calm down before speaking. Now it was his turn to squeeze his wrist and he didn’t like how similar they looked. It was scary, like looking at a younger, bruised Tony in front of him, looking afraid and terrified of what an older Stark was going to do or say to him. The word left…quiet…

“Why?”

“I had a bad feeling,” Peter murmured, shifting in the snow, and the pink around his eyes didn’t disappear, “Really bad…Like…The Awful Night. I haven’t felt like that, since then…”

The Awful Night. Tony didn’t know what The Awful Night was, but he had a feeling it had something to do with Benjamin Parker. Tony had read up on Peter, enough to know what that meant. Gunshot wound to the chest, robbery in a grocery store, Ben Parker had tried to be a hero. Had tried to talk the guy down, and had paid the price whilst his teenage nephew watched in horror. Peter was shifting back and forth, staring at the ground. Tony licked his lips, taking in the despair that some kid he barely knew was feeling and yet Tony could not process it…

“Don’t feel bad for me kid, I’ve had worse.”

Peter looked at him, seemingly horrified.

“That’s why it’s bad, sir. You don’t deserve it.”

That kid was probably the first person since Maria to say something like that to him. Most of his issues in his life he had come to terms about, had decided were because of his stupid decisions. Hammer, Killian, Ultron, hell New York was probably his fault somehow and he just didn’t know yet. Peter was watching with something like wonderment, it shifted from loss into that and Peter just kept talking and maybe the kid did that too much, “You’re awesome…I mean, the world is changing, and you change with it. You try. You do better than you have in the past. I don’t think you’re what the media says, you don’t look like what they say. There’s still so many ways for the world to grow and you’re gonna be in the center of it, right?”

So many ways for the world to grow.

Yeah, but Tony wasn’t going to live forever. It hit him like a train. Not forever. These legacies, everything, it would someday die with him. Pepper didn’t love him anymore, and he was alone, the penthouse was so quiet. Stark Industries grew with his inventions, but someday it would stop and those dreams would go away when he left and Tony stared into the wonder filled eyes of a fourteen-year-old kid, the top student of Midtown High School of Science, a boy willing to sacrifice everything, every night, to help the little guy.

Someone better than himself, at such a young age.

Tony had been in his late thirties.

Peter was only fourteen.

It was like a revolution. A selfish one that told him this was it – this was where he would start with that legacy. Maybe Howard’s mind had been the same, the same with Tony, but the forcefulness had been too strong and Tony had been choked by it. Peter was not raised in that. Tony gestured the boy forward, and Peter looked confused, but the snow shifted under his feet and he came towards him. He patted the spot on the rock beside him and carefully, Peter sat, still looking perplexed as to why they had gone quiet all of a sudden.

Legacy.

That’s what Howard had wanted.

_“What happened to your eye?”_

What better way to make it his own legacy, to steer from Howard, than to leave something behind for someone that wasn’t even a Stark?

“Mister Stark?” Peter whispered, “Are you okay?”

Tony nodded, face melting, and it turned into stoicism once more. He straightened his shoulders and he tilted his head to the side just slightly as he looked down at the boy who was trying to decipher what was happening. Tony could not say yet. He wondered if this was wrong, this wasn’t even his kid, after all. Maybe May Parker didn’t want her child to grow into the next Big One. But Tony had gathered too much for it to disappear upon his eventual demise. A legacy had to grow, and the kid had to take it.

Right now he wasn’t ready.

“I’m fine, kid,” Tony really was, “Just thought of my most brilliant creation yet.”


End file.
